Dictionaries in Spanish and English from 1554 to 1740: Their Structure and Development (review)

Professor Heberto Fernández' work fills an important gap in the history of English and Spanish bilingual lexicography. There has been a need for a survey since Roger J. Steiner's well-known and seminal book appeared forty years ago. Since then, there have been no comprehensive and detailed publications on the history of Spanish-English dictionaries of those two centuries, during which some of the most important lexicographical works appeared. Other studies have been published since 1970; however, they are not complete books and are mainly overviews published as journal articles or book chapters (such as that of Rizo Rodríguez and Salvador Valera; see References). In addition, facsimile editions of some early Spanish-English dictionaries, like John Minsheu's A Dictionarie in Spanish and English (1599), were published with introductory essays. Other such editions are needed, and for them the work we are currently reviewing is essential.

Professor Fernández' book has a clear, uniform, and meticulous structure; this is evident from the beginning in its comprehensive and detailed table of contents. As the author himself mentions in the Introduction, he follows an inductive method, which is most appropriate for lexicographical analysis. To this end, he begins with a detailed analysis of each dictionary, and then establishes a comparison with previous works in order to develop a typology of dictionaries published from 1554 to 1740. Twelve works are analyzed, starting with the anonymous Book of English and Spanish (1554?), followed by such well-known authors as Minsheu and Captain John Stevens (1705), and ending with the excellent dictionary by Pedro Pineda (1740). The book covers general dictionaries, arranged alphabetically or thematically, but not specialized ones. Lists of words included in grammars are not studied because they do not serve any lexical purpose.

The first chapters are of particular note as they include a section on the theory of lexicography and metalexicography, with an analysis of the key concepts required to understand this work, such as macrostructure, microstructure, nomenclature, etc. There is also a review of the criteria and definitions used by recognized researchers in theoretical lexicography. This chapter is extremely useful for researchers who are focused on lexicography, as it presents an extensive and varied literature review of the field of theoretical lexicography, which is the starting point of any analysis of a lexicographical work. Likewise, there is an interesting chapter dedicated to the important and influential role that Antonio de Nebrija played in the development of modern lexicography.

The in-depth analysis undertaken by Professor Fernández includes the megastructure, as well as the macro- and microstructures of each dictionary. In every case, examples from the dictionaries are included, giving the reader a real picture of the content of each work. The author touches on all the alphabetical dictionaries, but not on any encyclopedic work of the selected period.

Any reader who goes through the pages of this book will undoubtedly note the enormous amount of research required to produce it: the tracing of sources, the meticulous bibliographical documentation, the review of research on the subject, the study of dictionary editions, etc. In each chapter, the findings of previous researchers are discussed. The sources have been thoroughly checked and analyzed in detail with excellent results in many cases, such as the chapter focusing on Stevens, which clearly shows the starting point of his dictionary. Another very interesting aspect is the importance given to issues that are not always dealt with in other studies, but which are essential to understand the compilation of dictionaries, namely, the bio-bibliographical section.

The author has studied documents from each author's period, especially documents from the contemporary publishers. This is an important and relevant issue since it helps us to understand the editorial vicissitudes that many of these dictionaries underwent, at a time when the work of publishers was...